Elegy

Beauty and the Sexy Beast

Grade: B

Director: Isabel Coixet

Starring: Ben Kingsley, Penélope Cruz, Patricia Clarkson, Dennis Hopper, Deborah Harry, and Peter Sarsgaard

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hour, 48 minutes

Stoutly acting and lushly photographed, Elegy is also a bit of a tweener – too slick for the arthouse yet too highbrow for the Oxygen channel. It is deliberate yet never boring, comfortable yet imbued with a healthy dose of cynicism. As far as films about growing old go, it is not as witty and melancholy as Alexander Payne’s underrated About Schmidt; in the realm of May-December romances, it is not as provocative as Last Tango in Paris nor as nuanced as Lost in Translation. However, it is a dynamic character study highlighted by interesting performances from two actors who, like the persons they portray, occupy opposite ends of the personal and professional spectrum.

Ben Kingsley plays author, professor, and cultural critic David Kepesh, a divorcee estranged from his only son (Peter Sarsgaard) and cognizant of the fact that he is quickly approaching the twilight of his life. His only semi-meaningful relationships are with a poet friend (Dennis Hooper) and a friend-with-benefits (Patricia Clarkson).

Enter Consuela (Penélope Cruz), the latest in a long line of female undergrads Kepesh has plucked from the student body to satisfy his own. Kepesh (and, by extension, the audience) has an acute skepticism over Consuela’s motives for bedding him and the surely finite time their tryst will last. Indeed, the more outward indices point toward a genuine attraction on Consuela’s part, the more Kepesh recoils and retreats into his solitary existence, sometimes exercising cruel and insensitive means to do so.

Adapting Philip Roth’s novella, “The Dying Animal,” Spanish director Isabel Coixet conveys an often achingly earnest portrayal of regret, loss, and personal dysfunction. Both Kingsley (last seen conoodling yet another young actress, Mary-Kate Olsen, in The Wackness) and Hopper are pleasingly restrained. Cruz is especially terrific, but the problem is that her performance takes off only after Consuela reenters to Kepesh’s orbit once she is diagnosed with breast cancer, an emotionally cheap plot turn that undermines the carefully constructed character development preceding it. That Kepesh’s neurosis is so acute he would drive away a young, beautiful woman who unconditionally loves him is a narrative worth exploring. However, who but the most hard-hearted would not exude a keener appreciation of life when the woman you loved and lost returns asking for your help as she faces possible death? Kepesh’s supposed redemption not a sign of delayed maturation; it’s a matter of elemental humanity.

Neil Morris

Swing Vote

If this is actually"The Postman 2," I'm calling my agent.

Grade: C +

Director: Joshua Michael Stern

Starring: Kevin Costner, Madeline Carroll, Paula Patton, Kelsey Grammer, Dennis Hopper, Stanley Tucci, and Nathan Lane

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hours

Back when Frank Capra was making movies, the issue of voter disenfranchisement was still an insidious, unresolved blight on the American electoral system. While strategic voter suppression remains a campaign tactic wielded by the power-hungry, gone are the days of literacy tests and poll taxes, to say nothing of outright bans against African-American and women’s suffrage.

The Capra-esque patina coating Swing Vote encompasses the best and worst qualities of the descriptor. It is a cockeyed confection about the importance of the everyman, particularly as compared to the social and political elite. More than our system of government, it celebrates the role of the individual in that system. On the other hand, the film is both cornpone and confused, attempting to appeal to all sides by trying hard to not take a stand. It lampoons an electoral system plagued with pundits and platitudes by cramming an abundance of both down our throats, all set to John Debney’s cloying musical swells. Seriously, would someone please declare a moratorium on cameos by Larry King, James Carville, and any other infotainment celebrity?

Boozy buffoon Bud Johnson (Kevin Costner) lives in Texico, New Mexico, a time-warp where Dennis Hopper, Kelsey Grammer, and Judge Reinhold can still find work (did anyone consider the risks of reuniting the costars from Waterworld?). Bud wiles away his days working at the local egg-packing plant and being cared for by his precocious, 12-year-old daughter, Molly (Madeline Carroll). Molly wants her father to vote in the upcoming presidential election, while Bud just wants to drown his troubles away at the local bar. When Molly tries to cast Bud’s vote for him, a voting machine malfunction fails to count Bud’s ballot. Ultimately, New Mexico’s 5 electoral votes end up determining the winner of national election, and, most improbably, the state’s overall popular tally is a dead-heat. So, Bud’s uncounted, uninformed vote will determine the presidency.

Swing Vote works best when showcasing the media circus that descends upon Bud’s single-wide dust bowl during the overly-protracted 10-day prelude to Bud’s re-vote. A carnival atmosphere takes hold of Texico, along with the candidates themselves, Republican President Andrew Boone (Grammer) and Democratic Senator Donald Greenleaf (Hopper). Writer-director Joshua Michael Stern regales in skewering the phoniness of retail politics, contriving circumstances that lead both campaigns to blindly bend to Bud’s every sound-bite: the conservative Boone goes green and endorses gay marriage, while limousine liberal Greenleaf cuts commercials opposing illegal immigration and abortion.

Still, while Molly is the film’s purported moral center, it is difficult to escape the fact that her keen sense of civic duty and patriotism culminates with voter fraud, together with a local television reporter (Paula Patton) who supposedly recaptures her journalistic idealism by helping perpetuate that fraud. Moreover, Swing Vote ultimately takes the position that the most important element in our electoral process is not deciphering the differences between candidates or their platforms, but rather the mere privilege of being able to exercise that choice. It is a sentiment that might have held more sway back in Capra’s heyday. However, history – both distant and recent – would respectfully disagree.

Neil Morris